The more I think about this the less it makes sense.
1. Off peak fares are regulated fares aren’t they? How can they just remove them? Isn’t that a breach of some bit of legislation? Yes they have brought the franchises back in-house but have they actually repealed whatever forced TOCs to offer regulated fares according to the capped fare levels?
2. Isn’t also removing National Rail fares and imposing single operator only ticketing on a route a breach of something or other?
If the answer to the above is maybe yes is there not a potentially valid action for judicial review available to this decision. All you need is a class of individuals affected (us).
If not, is there not still a clear political argument that the Tories have used the cover of partial renationalisation to remove a category of flexible ticket that even they considered important enough to protect during initial privatisation?
Or, are we slightly misunderstanding this. Can you still buy a National Rail off-peak return, you just can’t buy a LNER specific off-peak return (which maybe you could before but nobody ever did?)
If we are not misunderstanding it, it really does feel like somebody should be looking into a JR of the decision.
Roll in an army of those bloody lefty lawyers (accountability) the Tories love to moan about in their hideous little clubs.
For me (and the Tories in the 90’s) the off peak return has always been THE protected backbone of rail travel. Your failsafe not hideously priced ticket, guaranteed available and guaranteed capped, if you need to get somewhere. If you find your plans have changed, you can get, shock horror, a refund. You only risk, bumping into a peak period but then you could, shock horror, pay an upgrade rather than the hideous system for other tickets where the TOC pretends your original ticket did not exist.
These are all massively important terms and conditions that LNER are pulling without any consultation. Maybe illegally?
It was always ridiculous that Anytime fares were not protected, or that there was not at least a regulated peak day return and single.
But for me one of the most ridiculous developments has always been the obsession with stuffing trains full of advance passengers paying under the odds, squeezing out off-peak passengers paying something more like the odds.
There is absolutely a place for advance tickets but it should be more like 2/5 advance, 2/5 off-peak and 1/5 first on a UK long distance train. That is an equitable split that gives everybody a fair crack at their journey with their competing needs of price/flexibility/comfort level.
There is NO argument for this change for demand suppression. Demand suppression would economically better be carried out by throttling back on the cheaper advance fares. Yes that might mean less discretionary travel but that is the point - it is discretionary and with all the railcard discounts most discretionary travel is accessible at the regulated off-peak fare. Families, young people and the elderly are particularly well catered for with railcards.
As for those who say there is currently no sense of off-peak trains for long distance trains in the UK, what utter drivel. On most routes most trains are off peak. It is the minority that are peak.
This needs fighting.